for that purpose in the general statute. Under these statutes a required number of the proposed municipality initiate the movement for incorporation by an enumeration of the voters within the proposed precincts, followed by a special election to determine whether a majority of the people favor incorporation. If the vote is in the affirmative, then an election is held for the officers necessary to organize the corporation and set it in motion.

26. Powers classified. The municipality possesses no other powers than: (a) those expressly enumerated in the charter; (b) such as are necessary for their appropriate use and execution; (c) such as are necessarily inherent in every municipal corporation."

27. Form of charter.-A municipal charter requires for its validity no particular form of words, but is valid and effective if the language employed manifests legislative intention thereby to erect a municipality.

Indeed, it may be regarded as already settled law that a municipal corporation may be created by implication, as well as by the use of the customary words in the charter. But the implication must be natural and necessary, and if, besides the absence of the usual words of incorporation and the omission of the essential properties thereof, there is no language from which either may be implied by the use of the recognized rules of interpretation, then the charter is essentially defective, and the municipality is not created thereby.

7 Winchester v. Redmond, 93 Va. 711, LEADING ILLUSTRATIVE CASES.

28. Repeal of charter.-A municipal charter, whether granted by special law or obtained under general laws, may be repealed by legislative act, either general or special, unless forbidden by the constitution. If the subsequent statute plainly manifests the unmistakable intention of the legislature that the provisions of the former statute shall no longer be in operation, then the repeal is effected; otherwise, the former statute generally remains in operation, even though the two statutes may not be harmonious. A special charter may thus be repealed not only by a special act, but also by a general act of legislation declaring that all municipal charters, or all of a certain class, including the one in question, are repealed, or enacting that the corporations are or shall be dissolved. So a charter under a general incorporation act may be repealed by special public law enacted for that particular purpose, as well as by a general statute, or by constitutional provision necessarily repugnant to, and irreconcilable with, the previous law.

How the charter of a municipal corporation organized under general law may be practically repealed is an interesting matter of inquiry, and has been the subject of much judicial consideration. Where the constitution forbids, the legislature may not pass any special statute affecting a municipal corporation, and therefore it may not repeal any charter by a special act. But in the absence of any such constitutional inhibition, the legislature may repeal any municipal charter by any recognized mode of legislation. By a single act it may repeal a single munic

ipal charter, or the municipal charters of a certain class of corporations, or all charters of all the municipal corporations within the state.

29. Governmental supervision. In addition to creation, alteration, and dissolution of a municipal corporation, the legislature, by virtue of its sovereign powers, may exercise supervisory control over its governmental functions and public affairs and property. A municipal corporation is peculiarly a government of the people, by the people, and for the people residing within the corporate limits. And one of the chief functions of such a corporation is the local exercise of the police power thereof. Not only the citizens of the municipality, but all who come within its boundaries, are subject to its jurisdiction. Its authority extends over these as well as the persons who are permanently within this jurisdiction. The exercise of its functions requires lands, goods, chattels, and money. The corporation must buy and sell. It incurs obligations which must be discharged. This property and these obligations may be strictly municipal, or they may be public in the wider sense. Out of this complex body, with its varied powers, purposes, and properties, and the administration of its affairs, must arise, therefore, many kinds of local rights, powers, and obligations, conflicting and complicated. In property bought and held specially for local purposes, the local community have a special interest, as has also the creditor who furnished money for its purchase.

8 People v. Hurlbut, 24 Mich. 44, 9 Am. Rep. 103, LEADING ILLUSTRATIVE CASES.

30. Officers.-In the absence of constitutional inhibition, the legislature has unlimited power of control over those municipal officers who are charged with the performance of governmental functions devolved upon the city, but cannot interfere with those officers who perform functions of a distinctly municipal character. This power is illustrated in many states by the creation of what is known as the "metropolitan police" for the larger cities. This police force is usually appointed and controlled by a board of commissioners, chosen either by the legislature or governor of the state, as an exercise of the sovereign power of legislation and patronage.

31. Public revenues.-The legislature has the same power over the public revenues of a municipality as over the immediate funds of the state, and in the exercise of this authority it may appropriate these revenues to any public purpose conducive to the public good. The ordinary revenues of a city are not its property in the sense in which private property is held by an individual. Such revenues belong to the public, and the collection and appropriation thereof by a city is the exercise of a trust function by the municipality for the benefit of the public.

The legislature is the representative of the public in this as well as other matters, and it may change these public revenues from one public channel to another at its discretion. The doctrine is generally recognized that no municipal corporation can have any vested right in the powers conferred upon it for governmental purposes. Therefore revenues

raised by taxation, though levied for specific public purposes, are so far subject to the legislative will that by it they may be applied to other uses of the community.

32. Municipal funds.-This power of the legislature to control municipal funds applies only to the strictly public or governmental revenues of the city, and rests obviously upon the sovereign legislative power of the state in all public matters. It does not exist with regard to property in which the municipality has a private interest or creditors have a vested right.

One rule governs public or governmental funds; another and different rule controls in handling quasiprivate funds. The public controls the public funds. The municipality disposes of its own funds. The legislature has full power over the revenues of a corporation, the source of which it may prescribe and alter at its pleasure. It may give or it may withhold, for example, the power to grant and tax licenses for various occupations; also the power to levy and collect wharfage or ferriage; or penalties for breach of law or of contract. It may ratify void local assessments; it may compel the satisfaction by the city of non-legal claims against it; it may regulate the use of streets, highways, and other public places; it may transfer the control of the parks, streets, and other public places to a board of commissioners appointed by the state. It may also create a board of police commissioners, and regulate the compensation for them and for the police officers of the municipality, and compel their payment out of the municipal treas